"The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff: And Other Stories" By Joseph Epstein Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24, 272 pages Since hearing “Beyond the Pale," selected by Alice Sebold for "The Best American Short Stories 2009," read as part of Symphony Space's radio series "Selected Shorts," I've been waiting for a new collection of short fiction from the incomparable Joseph Epstein. In this set of stories, largely about educated, professional men,...

Joseph Epstein knows who he is; and by the end of "A Literary Education and Other Essays," should you make it that far, you will, too. In fact it will have become apparent, well before the final essay in this collection, that Epstein is a cultural and political conservative who views current American society with disdain, an old-fashioned stick in the mud who is deeply proud of his stickishness, and, in his own words, "perhaps about as square as...

By Reviewed by Rockwell Gray, A critic who teaches literature and writing at Washington University in St. Louis | September 5, 1993

Pertinent Players: Essays on the Literary Life By Joseph Epstein Norton, 414 pages, $24.95 Joseph Epstein has done much to give the familiar and literary essay renewed currency in recent years. Since "Familiar Territory" (1979), a collection of "observations on American life," he has produced (including this latest title) six more books of essays, both familiar and literary. As editor of the quarterly The American Scholar, he has written many of these under the pen...

Our book club We've met monthly for 22 years. Books we loved "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot, "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "All My Sons" by Arthur Miller and essays by Joseph Epstein. We especially liked "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. Her research produced a riveting account of the horrors suffered by American prisoners of war in the Pacific during the last months of World War II and the events leading to the war's end. Two of our members are World War...

Envy: The Seven Deadly Sins By Joseph Epstein Oxford University Press/New York Public Library, 109 pages, $17.95 In "Envy," essayist Joseph Epstein confesses, in his characteristically sly way, that he's a lucky guy. He married the right woman. He found out what he wanted to do in life early on and turned out to be good at it. He has gotten his share of praise, and unlike most academics, his work is in demand at "most serious magazines." Diligent research also turns...

Back in December, Roger Carlson said he would be closed by the end of January, that his three decades as a North Shore literary staple would come to a quiet end and he would retire. But in January, he said "now it'll probably be February. " And in February, he said most likely everything in Bookman's Alley, the venerable, overstuffed, eccentric used bookstore he opened in an Evanston garage stall 33 years ago, would be sold off by late March. Last week, however, Carlson could still be found in his usual...

Friendship: An Expose By Joseph Epstein Houghton Mifflin, 270 pages, $24 It has long been well-known among serious readers in Chicago and its cultural satellites from New York City to Los Angeles that native son Joseph Epstein is a brilliant and outspoken commentator on contemporary social mores. He is also a polymath. (When I was a kid we would have called him a walking encyclopedia). Epstein also writes clear, witty and impressively memorable prose. I am sure he...

"The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff: And Other Stories" By Joseph Epstein Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24, 272 pages Since hearing “Beyond the Pale," selected by Alice Sebold for "The Best American Short Stories 2009," read as part of Symphony Space's radio series "Selected Shorts," I've been waiting for a new collection of short fiction from the incomparable Joseph Epstein. In this set of stories, largely about educated, professional men,...

Fred Astaire By Joseph Epstein Yale University Press, 224 pages, $22 cloth I do not dance. Confronted by the spectacle of people dancing, I am liable to stare grumpily at the offensively gyrating mob, after which I sniff disdainfully and then quickly depart the premises. I would like to say that this non-dancing stance is based upon religious scruple, but alas, it was born in a simpler place: I'm clumsy, bordering on oafish. Instead of...

Fred Astaire By Joseph Epstein Yale University Press, 224 pages, $22 cloth I do not dance. Confronted by the spectacle of people dancing, I am liable to stare grumpily at the offensively gyrating mob, after which I sniff disdainfully and then quickly depart the premises. I would like to say that this non-dancing stance is based upon religious scruple, but alas, it was born in a simpler place: I'm clumsy, bordering on oafish. Instead of...

By Joseph J. Ellis. Joseph J. Ellis is the author of "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation." | August 4, 2002

Snobbery: The American Version By Joseph Epstein Houghton Mifflin, 274 pages, $25 Much like pornography, snobbery is difficult to define, but we know it when we see it. My own experience had predisposed me to the view that snobbery was usually associated with British presumptions of superiority. My research on the American Revolution had convinced me, for instance, that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin decided to support American independence because of personal exposure to several doses of...

In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage By Joseph Epstein Houghton Mifflin, 410 pages, $26 Is it possible to be a happy essayist? Ralph Waldo Emerson, that American rock star of the thoughtful form, is not someone you'd press upon a depressive. "Every man is grave when alone," he wrote. How about Mary McCarthy or Eudora Welty? Or Joyce Carol Oates? There are many adjectives one might slap on the jackets of their books -- Furious! Beautiful! Intense!

By Reviewed by George Garrett, an author whose most recent novel is ``Entered From the Sun.`` | October 13, 1991

The Goldin Boys By Joseph Epstein Norton, 221 pages, $19.95 When a writer of earned reputation in one field tests that talent within a different form-poet writes novel, novelist writes play, playwright does a movie-we tend to be skeptical, wondering how much professional skill will be transferable and if the level of performance will be comparable. Will we have to make allowances? Will the master of one craft become a clumsy apprentice at another? Northwestern English professor, respected...

Friendship: An Expose By Joseph Epstein Houghton Mifflin, 270 pages, $24 It has long been well-known among serious readers in Chicago and its cultural satellites from New York City to Los Angeles that native son Joseph Epstein is a brilliant and outspoken commentator on contemporary social mores. He is also a polymath. (When I was a kid we would have called him a walking encyclopedia). Epstein also writes clear, witty and impressively memorable prose. I am sure he...

By Reviewed by Karl Shapiro, a poet and author, most recently, of ``The Younger Son,`` the first volume of his autobiography | January 8, 1989

Partial Payments: Essays Arising from the Pleasures of Reading By Joseph Epstein Norton, 429 pages, $18.95 The business of the non-aligned critic today-and Epstein has certainly made it his business-is to carry the banner of common sense, while running the gauntlet of experts firing at him with the latest weaponry. Epstein emerges from this critical valley of death miraculously all of a piece, even though the outcome is doubtful. We are in a very busy period of canon-makers, critics who...

By Reviewed by John Gross, editor of ``The Oxford Book of Essays`` and author of ``The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters.`` | April 28, 1991

A Line Out for a Walk By Joseph Epstein Norton, 331 pages, $21.95 Joseph Epstein is a true essayist. His two principal areas of expertise (there is a substantial overlap between them) are human nature and himself. But that does not mean that he goes in for large general theories or inward-looking reminiscences. Instead, he picks on a topic, anything from fashions in men's hats to hypochondria, which will enable him to take a fresh trawl through the sea of experience.

Charlie Trotter's will be closed. Everest, too. Even the Big Apple Bagels restaurant on the city's Far Northwest Side will be shuttered Christmas Day. But business at Lao Sze Chuan in Chinatown will be booming. On a normal Saturday night, owner Tony Hu accepts about 30 reservations. This Saturday, however, he expects 100--half will be his landsmen, the other half Jews. It's a cliche that happens to be true: While gentile families carve their holiday hams,...

By Maureen McLane. Maureen McLane is a fellow at Harvard University where she is researching British Romantic poetry and media | August 1, 1999

NARCISSUS LEAVES THE POOL: Familiar Essays By Joseph Epstein Houghton Mifflin, 336 pages, $25 A former editor of the journal The American Scholar and a teacher of English literature and writing at Northwestern University, Joseph Epstein has over the years acquired some fame as an essayist. As he suggests in the author's note to this volume (his sixth collection), his essays may now be read in retrospect as a kind of dispersed and unfolding autobiography. Although (as he hastens to inform us)

Charlie Trotter's will be closed. Everest, too. Even the Big Apple Bagels restaurant on the city's Far Northwest Side will be shuttered Christmas Day. But business at Lao Sze Chuan in Chinatown will be booming. On a normal Saturday night, owner Tony Hu accepts about 30 reservations. This Saturday, however, he expects 100--half will be his landsmen, the other half Jews. It's a cliche that happens to be true: While Gentile families carve their holiday hams, many Jewish...